A few days off in Sicily are never just a few days off, not if you're the type of person who writes for TFB. The island is absolutely saturated with World War II history, but apart from a pillbox here and there, you won’t notice it unless you go looking for it. But sooner or later, any visit to southeastern Sicily will bring you within reach of Museo Storico dello Sbarco in Sicilia 1943, located in Modica in the province of Ragusa. I made the time, and it was worth it. Here’s my article focused on the firearms carried by the soldiers, as well as a visit to the Machine Gun Room.War Museums @ TFB: Imperial War Museum London – Part I Imperial War Museum London – Part II A visit to James Purdey & Sons – British gunmaker of London Museum of the Great Patriotic War (Moscow) The museum is dedicated specifically to the Allied landings of 1943, and is a privately built collection that has been opened to the public. It covers the events of Operation Husky through original uniforms, helmets, personal documents, photographs, small arms, and military equipment, all arranged along a chronological and didactic route through the campaign. Plan for about an hour at a fast, but comfortable pace (longer if you want to read everything, or have a specialist interest). The normal entrance fee is a bargain, only €4. It is not a large or polished institution in the vein of the Imperial War Museum (U.K.), but that is precisely part of its character: this is a passion project built by people who care deeply about ensuring the memory of what happened here in the summer of 1943 does not quietly disappear. A practical note for anyone planning to visit: a number of the display cases containing small arms were poorly lit, with several spotlights either burned out or missing entirely. For anyone hoping to photograph the firearms on display, this is a genuine obstacle. Bring patience and bump up your ISO. Below is a fine example of the lighting situation, with the MP40, K98 Kurz, Gewehrgranatgerät, signal pistols, Luger P-08, Kampfpistole flare gun, Walther P-38, various German grenades, mines and mortar bombs. There’s also a Czech light machine gun, ZB 30, in cal. 7,92x57 IS. If only these items could speak. Another note is that although some of the information is translated into English, most is not. We’re in Italy - what did you expect? Background: What Happened in Sicily in the Summer of 1943? Operation Husky launched on the night of 9-10 July 1943 and was, at the time, the largest amphibious invasion in history, a title it held until Normandy the following year. The Allied force involved was extraordinary in scale: more than 150,000 troops, 3,000 ships, and 4,000 aircraft. American forces under General Patton's Seventh Army landed along the southern coast near Gela and Scoglitti, while British and Canadian forces under General Montgomery's Eighth Army came ashore near Pachino and Portopalo di Capo Passero in the southeast.The Axis defenders comprised two primary forces: the Italian military, whose resistance in the western part of the island quickly collapsed, and the German Wehrmacht, specifically elements of the Hermann Göring Division and the 15th Panzergrenadier Division, who made a far more determined stand in the eastern part of the island, particularly around Catania and the slopes of Mount Etna. The campaign officially concluded on 17 August 1943, when Allied forces entered Messina, though the bulk of German and Italian troops had already conducted a successful evacuation across the Strait of Messina in the days prior.Approximately 14,000+ Axis and Allied military personnel were killed, along with significant but unconfirmed civilian casualties.Thirty-eight days. An island the size of Vermont. Four armies with four different sets of weapons.The Firearms of Operation HuskyThe small arms picture in Sicily in 1943 is a fascinating cross-section of the war's most iconic weapons. The Americans went ashore largely equipped with the M1 Garand, the semi-automatic rifle that gave U.S. infantry a significant rate-of-fire advantage over bolt-action-armed opponents. The M1 Carbine was widespread among support troops and officers. The Thompson submachine gun was common in assault roles, and the M1918A2 BAR provided squad-level automatic fire. Officers and NCOs carried the M1911A1 pistol. You will also get to see the AN-M8 flare pistol as used by the United States forces. The British and Canadians operated with the Lee-Enfield No. 4 Mk I as their standard rifle, a robust and famously fast bolt action. Three different models were on display. The soldiers are from the 38th Irish Infantry Brigade and the 78th Infantry Division, and a Marshal of the 51st Scottish Division “Highlander”. A close-up below. The signal pistol is a Webley & Scott. The Sten Mk II was the submachine gun of choice: crude, inexpensive, and adequately reliable. The Bren light machine gun gave sections their automatic support, and officers carried the Webley or, increasingly, the Browning Hi-Power. The German defenders brought the Wehrmacht's standard package: the Kar98k bolt-action rifle as the backbone, supplemented by the MP40 submachine gun and, critically, the MG42, probably the most effective general-purpose machine gun of the entire war, capable of a cyclic rate of up to 1,200 rounds per minute. The FG 42 paratrooper rifle (Fallschirmjägergewehr 42) saw some use with the German airborne troops who reinforced the island.Italian forces were armed predominantly with the Carcano M91/38 bolt-action rifle in 7.35mm (or 6.5mm in the earlier variants), the Beretta Model 38 submachine gun, claimed to be one of the genuinely excellent weapons of any army in the war, and the Breda Model 30 light machine gun, an unreliable and awkward design that was a perennial source of frustration in Italian units. Sidearms were typically the Beretta M1934 in 9mm Corto (.380 ACP). Top to bottom in the image below: Model 1891 TS, modified caliber 6.5mm with a fixed bayonet.The bolt-action of the Cavalry, model 1891, in caliber 6.5mm. The offensive hand grenades are Breda, model 35 (“Red Devil”). Bolt-action model 1891 of the Infantry, with ammo in its original packaging. Bolt-action model 1891/38 in caliber 7,35mm, with a dagger-bayonet (in rest-position). At the bottom, a little cut-off, is the Beretta submachine gun, model 1938 “A”, in caliber 9x19mm with ammunition. Below: Another unusual find was the Spanish replica of the Smith & Wesson 32 caliber revolver from 1922, made by Azul. The Machine Gun RoomA fair amount of TFB’s readers follow our Lynndon Schooler’s regular articles, so it’s only fair to say that one of the highlights of the museum is a dedicated room housing a collection of machine guns from the era, representing multiple nations and design philosophies. Standing in front of these guns, the sheer diversity of approaches to automatic fire during the Second World War becomes immediately apparent, from the refined to the improvised, from the dependable to the frankly problematic. Here is a rundown of some of the guns on display.Below: Exhibit Nr 1, bottom center, is a Boys anti-tank rifle in .55 Boys. Below is a S.I.A. Modello 1918 in 6.5×52mm Carcano. This is arguably the most historically obscure piece in the room, and one of the more interesting stories. Its appearance makes sure no one will miss it. The Mitragliatrice Leggera SIA Modello 1918 was an Italian air-cooled light machine gun designed by Giovanni Agnelli and produced by Società Italiana Aviazione from 1918 to 1923. The SIA featured a delayed blowback system, fed from a 30-round detachable magazine inserted into the top of the receiver. The skeletal magazine design that allowed debris into the action and extraction issues with the bottlenecked Carcano cartridge were persistent problems.Number 6, hiding in the image above, is the Châtellerault FM 24/29 in 7.5×54mm French. Designed in 1924 by the Manufacture d'armes de Châtellerault, it became the standard-issue light machine gun of the French Army from 1925 until the 1960s. The design owed a considerable debt to John Browning's Automatic Rifle, though the French engineers moved the magazine from the bottom to the top, a practical change that made the gun easier to use from a prone position. Seeing one in person must be quite rare, and it’s not hiding behind a glass screen.No machine gun collection from this period would feel complete without the Bren, and the museum's example does not disappoint. The Bren Mk II is the British Commonwealth's light machine gun of the war, and was produced in enormous quantities from the late 1930s onward. The Breda M38 (below) began life as a tank machine gun, fitted to Italian armored vehicles including the Fiat L6/40 light tank and the Fiat M13/40 medium tank. It is air-cooled, gas-operated, and magazine-fed with a quick-change barrel. When adapted for infantry use, it was fitted to a tripod via an adapter and given temporary open sights in place of the optical sight used in the tank role. Its operational features are simple and it is extremely easy to field-strip or disassemble completely, which made it genuinely useful in the hands of troops who needed to maintain their weapons under field conditions. The M38 shares the same 8×59mm Breda cartridge as the Fiat Mod. 35, keeping logistics relatively simple for Italian units equipped with both. The Germans, who had a pragmatic habit of cataloguing captured weapons, gave it the designation Kampfwagen-Maschinengewehr 350(i).Next is a Browning M1919A4 in .30-06 Springfield. As a kid, this was the characteristic machine gun I used to draw. The American workhorse of the war and probably the direct counterpart to every Italian gun in the room. The M1919A4 was the standard U.S. medium machine gun of World War II, belt-fed, air-cooled, and chambered in .30-06 Springfield, a round with considerably more authority than the Italian 6.5mm offerings. Reliable, accurate, and relatively straightforward to maintain in field conditions, the M1919A4 saw action in virtually every theater of the war. In Sicily, it was the gun that American infantry carried onto the beaches near Gela and Scoglitti on July 10, 1943, and kept in action through the 38-day campaign. Mounted on its M2 tripod, it gave U.S. machine gun sections a sustained-fire capability that routinely outperformed its Italian counterparts. The Museum's Collection in ContextThe Museo della Memoria does a good job of representing most of these threads. The collection covers all four parties to the fighting, with particular attention to the human dimension, the personal items, documents, and photographs that make the history tangible rather than abstract. For a firearms enthusiast, the small arms on display are the obvious draw, and there are worthwhile examples to be seen, even if the lighting situation (as noted) makes photography a frustrating exercise. What you have seen here is only a focus on (some of) the hand-held firearms; there is much more to discover once inside - anything from bunker replicas, torpedoes and various light cannons. As a place to stand inside the history of Operation Husky, understand the strategic stakes, and connect the weapons in the cases to the men who carried them across those beaches eighty-odd years ago, the people who suffered and died, the museum does its job honestly and with evident care.If you find yourself in southeastern Sicily, and you should, because the coastline and the baroque hill towns of the Val di Noto are reason enough on their own, the museum is definitely worth at least an hour of your time. Another “must” in Sicily is to climb Mount Etna, Europe’s highest active volcano. I made it up to 3027 meters (9930 feet), with some 335 meters still to go to the top. The website of the Museo Storico dello Sbarco in Sicilia 1943 is: www.museosicilia1943.it with additional information like opening hours, ticket price, etc. here: https://cultura.gov.it/luogo/museo-storico-dello-sbarco-in-sicilia-1943Note: I’ve done what I can for the information to be as correct as possible, but some of the information was only available in Italian, and some of the translations into English seemed to lack detail in some cases more than others. All images by the author.